This is Not an Exit
by Meredith Bronwen Mallory
Summary: Doctors at Corella General find themselves keepers of a Nubian woman who refuses to give her name, even on pain of imprisonment.
1. Dark, Light and No Line in Between

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Author's Notes- First of all, thanks so much for bothering to look at my thread! I'm so glad you clicked in here. 

Secondly... I just can't help myself! I started another fic. [face_shock] My muse is a mad woman. This will hopefully proove to be a shorter fic, though. 

This is just another one of my endless Padme/Vader speculations. I'm also using Han Solo's mom... I'm hoping I do a good job. 

I will love you forever if you give me feedback. 

Sigma, 

Meredith 

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"There was light and then there was darkness, but there was no line in 

between. And asking her heart for guidance was like pleading with a 

machine." 

--Ani DiFranco, "Fierce Flawless"

=======================

This is Not an Exit

by Meredith Bronwen Mallory

mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com

http://www.demando.net/

=======================

They brought her in during the graveyard shift; she was wet with sewer water and so thin you could count each carefully sculpted bone in her body. Her hair, slick and tangled like so many thorns, clung to her body like a sick cocoon. 

"Where'd you want her, Tommy?" This wasn't just any women-- even the orderlies seemed to register her as something other than a body to be carted in and out. Beneath the grime and blood that trailed along her cheek, this woman seemed to shimmer with... well, it wasn't exactly light, more like the bright void between the stars. 

"Pretty," Tommy muttered, trying to sound unimpressed.

"Hell, yeah," an orderly whistled, earning him a dirty-ice gaze from the doctor.

The lead orderly jostled his end of the stretcher impatiently and the woman let out the low cry of mother wolf. Tomode Solo arched a single eyebrow in surprise when the orderly actually apologized.

"Bed eight was recently vacated," she gestured vaguely with her pen, attempting the record the evaporating wisps of her interrupted diagnosis onto the flimsi-plast. "Put her down over there. Your girl got a name?"

"Noppers," this from a young apprentice maid-- bright eyed and wearing her earnestly like a gown, "We found her sleeping in the sewer. The diagnosis people checked her on the way here in the speeder. She isn't a prostitute. Dr. Solo-- she looks in pretty bad shape."

Tommy smiled in a long practiced motherly fashion, "It's sweet of you to care, honey," all earnest-eyed new apprentice maids were 'honey'. Hanging the flimsiboard back on another patients bed, Tommy approached the broken heap of china-doll woman. Her hands touched briefly in different places, checking for the sweet glow of heartbeat breath and warmth of skin. "Her vital signs are good. She's probably got every disease in the thrice-damned sewer, but she'll be okay." Waving off the others, Tommy bit her lip and pressed a button on the small pager strapped under her doctor's robes. "Assistance in Ward E, please," she muttered only half-intelligably into her headset. 

"Well, sweet-face," she addressed the unconscious woman, "let's see if we can't clean you up a tad, huh?" Gingerly, she took a seat on the empty bed nearby and leaned over, short fingers reaching into the other woman's tangled locks. Drawing away the umber veil, Tommy surprised herself with a gasp; the woman wasn't so much beautiful as she was strangely like a siren. In sleep, with her eyelashes fanned against her cheeks, one seemed to watt breathlessly for those eyes to open and reveal their color. What flash of rainbow glass would one see; blue, green, brown, gold, gray? Her face was more than the sum of her parts, and for a moment Tommy's vision was blocked by a memory-- being young, very young and seeing a face as alpha-and-omega as this woman's, suspended into the holoproj. Abruptly, she shook her tight blue-black curls and snorted. Girls who were beautiful always won, that's the way it was in the fairy tales and that's the way it was in live. "Shouldn't get any privileges just for being a nice decoration, sweet-cake," Tommy muttered. 

"Hmm?" the noise came from behind the doctor, and she half-jumped, half-turned on the young nurse who'd presented herself. "You wanted help?" spoken hopefully, with the dark-eyed girl looking up through the sheen of her iron-gray hair. 

"Took you long enough," Tommy muttered almost kindly. "This lady's just in from the bowels of our beloved Correllian capital. A sewer rat. We need to clean her up and check her."

"For what?" the nurse-- who's name was embroidered 'Thalia' along the collar of her uniform-- tilted her head with the question.

"Why, to see if she's the goose that lays golden eggs," Tommy dead-panned. Her voice rose just a notch, "We gotta check her for heart rot, devi's crumble and just about every other disease on the book, silly." 

"Sorry," Thalia murmured, and Tommy shook her head forgivingly. Together, the two women carefully cut away their patient's thick, dirt-caked dress. In some places, the cloth clung to skin like a leech, leaving blood in its wake. It was like the myth where the barren mother cuts into the peach and finds herself a baby girl. 

"Awfully pretty," the nurse offered. 

"I guess, didn't get her much of anyplace, though," Tommy sighed, brushing a matted lock of hair away from the woman's face. She surprised herself with the tenderness in that gesture. The scraps of fabric accumulated to a small heap on the floor, which began to resemble some childhood monster-- misshapen and hopeless. At last, the woman lay bare, and Tommy ran a clean lavendar-soaked cloth over each offended area of skin, at last covering the woman with a thin sheet. 

"We'll have to wait ''til she's conscious to do anymore," the doctor stood, wiping her hands absently on her sash. "It may be a while before that happens," she picked up the woman's papers and flipped through them with mild disinterest, "Says here she panicked and the pick-up team had to trank her. Bloody brilliant-- they probably knocked her into next week."

Thalia pursed her lips and briefly gripped the unconscious woman's hand, "And then?"

"And then we see if somebody claims her. If not, she's off to the Empire's work program, may his majesty live long and well," the last bit came out quickly and like a curse. Fingering the locket chained about her neck, Tommy sighed, "let's just hope she's got family."

"Oh." The nurse said again, "Oh," with a little girl's face.

Tommy sat down beside the younger woman and slipped an arm around her in a loose embrace, "You're new around here." Not a question.

"Sure," Thalia tried to be blithe, "I'm insured for ten years or ten thousand parsecs, whichever comes first."

"Cute," Tommy thumped her on the back. 

"She's got to have somebody, doc. She's just so..."

"Something, huh?" the doctor's tone is the Sahara in midday, "Don't know what she's got, but everyone who's seen her has gone ga-ga." 

"Funny thing is, she's not like the fairy tales," Thalia ducked her head with twin blossoms of color coming to her cheeks, "I like fairy tales. Anyway, she's not a perfect princess."

Tommy rested a chin in her hand, skeptical, "Oh?"

"Lookit," Thalia reached towards the patient with an unpracticed sort of gentleness. "She's scared. Even unconscious, she's afraid." And sure enough there was a colorless nightmare shifting underneath the beautiful woman's skin; her lips seemed frozen in an attempt to cry out. "Maybe," the nurse tested out the words, "maybe she's someone's fiancee. Or wife. Maybe she's a baroness or something, and she was kidnapped. Maybe..." Catching the look on the doctor's face, Thalia blanched, "never mind."

Despite herself, Tommy inquired, "No, what is it?"

"You already think I'm a silly little girl," the gray-haired one's posture slouched in defeat. 

"No, no I don't," Doctor Solo said, only half the truth, "It's just that, in my experience, fairy tales shouldn't be told. Biggest crime ever-- telling people there can be a happily ever after when there ain't no way it can happen."

Thalia nodded without agreeing, "Well, she could be an angel."

"A what?" Tommy's question was almost a laugh.

"An angel," Thalia said, as if explaining a thoroughly simple concept to a child. For the first time, Tommy realized that there really wasn't that much age between them. "My uncle...."

For just a minute, black slithered over Tommy. Just that word, 'uncle', and her whole spine froze until it cracked. Damn you, she thought viciously, you're dead. And he was dead, all six feet of him, the whole bulk of him that used to lean over her in the night and make the bed squeak with his rocking. He was all dead. You just stay dead, Tommy gritted her teeth, you just stay dead, you bastard, and give me some peace. She fingered her locket again, remembering a little boy-smile that somehow makes it all fade.

"Doctor Solo?" Thalia's inky eyes were wide, and her hand was passing in front on Tommy's face. 

"Sorry," the doctor bluffed, "I've been running on brandy and four hours sleep. Go on."

"As I was saying," Thalia continued primly, "My uncle," (only a twinge of pain this time) "he's a starship pilot, and they tell all sortsa stories. He says there's a moon or a planet-- maybe a city-- called Iego and that angels live there. They're so kind and wonderful and beautiful they can make a man cry."

"Aye-ngle," Tommy tried to wrap her tongue around the foreign word. "Nice little story. They're all nice little stories." 

"Yes, Ma'am," Thalia stood at last, letting her shadow rest over the woman with no name.

"Go on," Tommy gave her a friendly shove, "get some food and grab a clean bed. Word has it the Stormtroopers will storm a bunch of rebel spots down town, so we're in for a busy night. Sleep while you can."

"Thanks, I will," Thalia made a sloppy curtsy and vanished through the twin doors at the end of the long ward hall. For a moment, Tommy Solo took the patient's hand up in her own, caressing the knuckles with her thumb. The skin was soft and only slightly spoiled by the rotten living conditions the woman must only recently have known.

"So, you're scared, huh?" Tommy smiled sadly, "I'm scared too, doll-face." Then, she flicked out her pen like a blaster and began scribbling on the flimsi-plast. At the top of the sheet, there was a slot labeled 'name'. Biting her lip, Tommy shook her head at her own sentimentality, unsure of how to spell the word she wanted to write.

After a moment, she penned in, "Engle." 

She meant Angel.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

[to the tune of 'this is the song that never ends'] 

__

Meredith's fic writing never ends, 

Yes it ges on and on my friends, 

Her muse started making her type a long time ago, 

And now feedback is the fuel that makes her go go go! 


	2. Sometimes Your Heart is a Machine

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Author's Notes: I hope everyone had a happy Turkey Day. I want to thank you all for replying to this story-- you're so sweet to bother.

Special Thanks to: lili brink, Becky, remnants-2011, gollum4ever, A. Windsor (always a pleasure to hear from you!), Princess Organa Skywalker, Brigantia (you left me such a sweet message it really brightened my day), Mei-Mei, Uche (whisper; thanks!), Nadra, and the every lovely pokey. ^_^

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This is Not an Exit 1b/?

By Meredith Bronwen Mallory

mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com

http://www.demando.net

===================================

It was the slam of the staff-room door that woke Tomode Solo from a shallow, blighted sleep. With a hiss, she raised her head like a lioness and the apprentice maid at fault shot her a terrified look. 

"You got something against closing doors quietly?" Tommy asked rubbing her forehead.

"I *am* sorry," the maid wrung her hands, then minced over to the counter and poured herself a thick glass of brown caff. "It's just Doctor Farr-- he's on the rampage. We have about sixteen civilians come in who were caught in crossfire with the troopers downtown. You know how he gets. He makes me so... gah!"

"My condolences," Tommy said with sincerity. She pushed her body away from the table she'd been slouched over on and tried in vain to organize the flimsies she'd been using as a pillow. Absently, she rubbed at the backwards smear of 'increase dosage' that had transfered to her skin. 

"Speak of the devil--" the maid hissed into her caff as the door swung open again. Doctor Farr strode in, ignoring the apprentice maid and staring down his nose at Tommy.

"You sleep in here again, Solo?" he sniffed, "Don't you ever go home?" 

Tommy uncorked her now-warm bottle of brandy and took a rebellious slug, "Don't have a home." She handed the bottle off to the maid, who put it in the fridge with the caff. "I've a two room apartment and an empty bed. No one to go home to."

"Come, come, Doctor Solo," Farr straightened his robes in the cracked and lopsided mirror, "bitterness doesn't--"

"Suits me just fine, thanks," Tommy pushed her chair away and lifted a wad-like stack of paper-work towards the other doctor, "Here's the Ward C reports. We're out of three different types of pills-- same as last month and the month before that."

"I've put into the Imperial Governor for more funding," Doctor Farr said, taking the sheets.

"And I'll faint if we actually get it," rolling her eyes, Tommy felt a slight buzz on her headset. Flipping a switch on her pager, she took a breath and said, "Yes?"

"Doctor Solo? You asked to be notified when the girl in Ward E woke up?" the voice was distant.

"Yes, yes, I'll be right there," Tommy tugged at her sash and pushed through the doors purposefully.

"I took a sample of her blood for Central," the orderly said when Tommy arrived, carefully hiding the words behind her slim comp-board. "We'll see if we can't pull anything up on her."

"Good, thanks," Tommy waved her hand dismissively, eyes focused on the woman sitting in bed number eight. She was sitting up, the thin sheet pooled around her like murky water. Her breasts were bare and sagging with milk-- she was holding her palms under her nipples to collect the tiny flow, but on the whole was unashamed of her nakedness. Hiking up her robes, Tommy perched on the empty bed to the right watching the other woman with wide, violet-brown eyes. At last, she managed, "How are you feeling?" 

Engel stared at her for a moment, and Tommy could see that *her* eyes were any and all colors, a precious chamileon opal, and she was frightened by the deadness in them. "Tired. Sore," she said softly, then softer still, "Scared. Where am I?"

"Corella General," the doctor said easily. "They found you in the sewer."

"I can't move my legs." Tommy had never seen anyone so terrified act quite so calm. 

She momentarily wished she had glasses, if only something to stare through, "They said you fought back against the trank. You probably got something pressing on the lower spinal cord. Don't worry, I'll put your name in for surgery ASAP." Delicately, she took up an edge of the sheet as wiped away a drop of milk making its way along Engel's ribs. "Say-- there are a bunch of babies down in the orphans ward who could really use that stuff. Would you mind a pump?"

"Oh," Engel said with a careful look on her face. Her pain was earnest, and still she wore a mask. "Yes-- yes, I'd like to help."

"Right," Tommy snapped at an orderly, "Get a breast pump over here pronto."

"Can I..." Engel wipped her hands on the sheet, "ah, can I feed the babies myself? Later? Like a wet nurse?"

"It's highly irregular," Tommy said without thinking, and watched Engel's face become a broken mirror. "But, yeah, I guess so." She reached down to the footlocker at the end of the bed, "Say, if you're going anyplace, you better put some clothes on." She handed over a thick, gray cotton standard regulation dress. 

Engel slipped it over her head, and buttoned it up after cleaning off the rest of her chest. The orderly arrived with the pump and Engel promptly undid the buttons again. 

"You tell me when this hurts, 'kay sweet-pea?" Tommy asked, securing the machine and making sure the settings were proper.

Engel nodded, "Alright."

Nervously, Tommy's fingers twined around her locket, "Where are *your* babies, Miss?"

"First I'm "sweet pea", now I'm 'miss'," Engel blushed but did not lower her eyes. The words about children seemed to pass right through her-- as though she or they were phantoms and she just couldn't bare it.

"Well, we don't have a name for you," Doctor Solo spread her hands helplessly, "Unless you wanna help us out with that. What's your name?"

Engel tilted her chin every-so-slightly, "I don't remember." Her lips formed a candy-heart shape as she pursed them in thought.

"You're bull-shitting me," Tommy said with her best poker face.

"You put a name down on the sheet," Engel pointed out, "I caught just a glimpse when the nurse came around."

"Right," Tommy drawled, "I just put down Engel. Better than nothin'."

"Angel?" there was the slightest bit of vibrato in her voice, and she pronounced it correctly. Though her breaths were deep and slow, it seemed as though she might hyperventilate. "Where'd you get that?"

Tommy's almond-shaped eyes narrowed to the size of dried flower petals, "A nurse, barely more than a kid, said you looked like one. Some pilot's fairy story, they..."

"--they live on the moons of Iego, I think," said Engel, who seemed to be speaking for someone else, "They're the most beautiful creatures in the universe. Kind and wonderful."

"Yeah," Tommy frowned, which was only slightly more pinched than her normal expression, "How'd you--"

"I'm not an angel," Engel's voice was intense. "I'm not." She was gripping the bed rail with knuckles fading to white.

"Alright, you're not," the doctor put in shrewdly, "But unless you give me something else, Engel it is."

"I guess it is then," the other seemed to draw into herself, "The pump hurts now." Gently, Tommy eased the equipement away. The tank was full to the brim with the ivory liquid, and she genuinely smiled at her patient.

"You've been a big help," her smile only widened, "feeding the babies that ration formula is like signing their death certificate. Breast milk is what they really need."

"Next time I get to feed them myself, right?" it came out all in one breath.

Tommy just nodded, "Probably tomorrow morning." She flicked a glance down at her watch, "Doctor Interp should finish up in the OR in about ten minutes. I'll send a nurse down to prep you and we'll fix that spine of yours right away."

Laying back, Engel's eyes spoke her thanks, and she seemed to drift away to a place between sleep and waking-- a veil of forgetfullness fell over her eyes. Grabbing a fresh sheet, Tommy tucked Engel in and moved towards the door before flipping on the beeper to the general band.

"Thalia--" at a loss for a last name, she shrugged, "Thalia, report to Ward E. Our mystery girl is awake and needs to be prepped for surgery."

"Be right there," came the response through the static. Tommy muttered an affirmative and glanced through the ward-window. Engel lay on the thorn-bed of her matted hair, arms loosely cradling air.

Tommy knew that, in her mind, the other woman was really holding a baby.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = 

"Koo! Tommy put your name down as Engel!" Thalia enthused as she lifted Engel's clip-board, "How romantic."

Engel, floating on a river of half-dreaming, smiled a sad and kind smile, "If you really want to think so."

"You must have someone looking for you, I'm sure," the nurse went on unabated, "All this will seem like a dream when he comes for you."

"He?" softly, firmly, dangerously spoken. Engel glanced up at the other woman through her thick lashes. 

"Well, surely there's someone out there who loves you," Thalia almost sang, "You'll see."

Engel rolled over on her side and drew her knees up to her empty breasts, "You must think love is wonderful."

Thalia's face paused inbetween emotions, "Isn't it?" 

"Isn't it," Engel murmured, almost frightened, as Thalia undressed her like a doll and applied the pre-surgery fluids, "Isn't it."

Somebody loves me, thought Engel-- who was also called Padme. It was like a funeral dirge or the words on an execution warrant; there's somebody who loves me. 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

(to the tune of "Jingle Bell Rock") 

__

Feedback yeah, feedback yeah, feedback's my thing, 

It makes me dance, 

And it makes me sing, 

A few words, a thousand, or a bunch in a row, 

I just like to know, 

'Cause it makes me glow, 

Oh, yeah, feedback's my thing. 


End file.
